We had
a house guest once, a young woman from Finland, who took
a drink of water from the faucet in our kitchen and
said: "Say…(slurp)…this is great!…(slurp, slurp)… Much better than the…(slurp)…stuff you get in Finland…(slurp, aaah!)" It had never occurred to
me that our water was better than the water in bucolic
Finland. I suggested that maybe the reindeer up there
were doing some very unbucolic things near the water
sources; yet, the event again reminded me of how good
the water in Naples is supposed to be.Aside
from episodic outbreaks of thevibrio choleraebacterium, Neapolitan
water has historically been said to be marvelous. And
cholera? Well, since the germ theory of disease wasn't
really solid until the 1880s, they didn't know about
boiling water before you drink it. Thus, generations of
benevolent Neapolitan monarchs actually boiled the
peasants instead, but whoever said that scientific
progress comes without sacrifice?The
best water was said to come from the Chiatamone spring,
at the base ofMount Echia, directly across from theCastel dell'Ovo in the Santa Lucia
section of Naples. Mt. Echia
is also called Pizzofalcone and Monte di Dio and is
essentially the cliff of Naples upon which the original
Greek acropolis of the pre-Neapolis city ofParthenopestood in the 4th century,
b.c. The topography of the city was radically changed by
theRisanamento,the urban renewal of the
1890s. First, they moved the greatSanta
Lucia fountain,
built by the Spanish in the 1600s to tap into the
Chiatamone spring; then, all along the seaside on both
sides of theCastel dell'Ovo, a broad strip of
land-fill was laid in front of the cliff, and the entire
strip was lined with new hotels that fronted on a broad,
new seaside road. This hid the cliff and the original
coast road of via Chiatamone forever; they are now
behind the hotels. The original Chiatamone spring is now
on the property of the Hotel Continental; the spring is
covered and abandoned on a small space between two wings
of the hotel (photo, below). Even if you are dying of
thirst, they won't let you in. (I tried.)

In
any event, for centuriesthe spring at the base
of the cliff was the source of (1) water and (2)
livelihood for the acquaioli, the
itinerant water peddlers who would fill up their
amphorae (called lummare in dialect)
and wander the streets selling drinks to passers-by.
There are many sketches and paintings of the water
peddlers in various descriptions of the days of yore in
Naples, especially of the trades
and jobs that no longer exist. Perhaps the best
known work of art connected with the acquaiolo
is the silver statue of that name (photo, above) by the
nineteenth-century Neapolitan sculptor, Vincenzo Gemito, a work
he did on commission for the last king of Naples,
Francis II, then living in exile and desperate for a
memento from home. It depicts a nude scugnizzo—the
Neapolitan street urchin—holding the amphora on his hip, his
arm outstretched to offer a drink of water.

The spring was an artesian well; thus, there are
other places nearby where the same drilling process has
been used to tap into the water of Chiatamone over the
years. One was on the grounds of the RoyalPalace
itself; a well was installed in 1850 at the behest of
Ferdinand II, the king of Naples. The large gymnasium on
the eastern side of the Royal Palace used to have a
source, as well. And here and there in the area, various
taps would be opened and then closed again for various
reasons, hygiene being the main one. The last time you
could simply buy a drink of good old Chiatamone water,
they say, was before the cholera scare of 1973. A short
while ago, they opened some taps on the street that runs
up between the "Parthenope"
University (the ex-Naval University) and the Maschio Angioino from the port
to the east side of the Royal Palace, but they were
turned off shortly thereafter.